Ben-Hur | 8/19/16 | 7 minutes of Jack Reacher will play before the movie

[Morieris]

If nothing else, I admire the dedication of everyone involved. 

[Claire of Themyscira]

So, how was Jack Reacher?

[Blankments]

This was pretty awful

[The Futurist]

11 minutes ago, Blankments said:

This was pretty awful

 

I enjoyed it quite a bit and was emotional at the end, plus the acting was way better than the 1959 version which pretty abysmal in that department.

[Melvin Frohike]

On 8/24/2016 at 3:27 PM, dudalb said:

You could not get away with the "ecumenical" approach the 59  version did with today's Christian audiences .

 

I'm not sure what you mean.  Doesn't "ecumenical" mean something that applies/involves all Christian traditions?  What do today's Christian audiences demand from a movie, the perspective of a specific Christian tradition (e.g. Catholicism, Evangelicalism, etc.)?  Or do you mean "secular" or "agnostic" instead?

 

 

On 8/24/2016 at 3:27 PM, dudalb said:

The 1959 film is very vague on the divinity of Jesus, and very deliberately so.

 

But doesn't Balthasar at one point literally proclaim that Jesus is the "Son of God"?  That doesn't seem very vague to me.

[Murgatroyd]

3 hours ago, Melvin Frohike said:

But doesn't Balthasar at one point literally proclaim that Jesus is the "Son of God"?  That doesn't seem very vague to me.

 

That just means that one character thinks he's divine, not that he necessarily is.

[Melvin Frohike]

34 minutes ago, Murgatroyd said:

 

That just means that one character thinks he's divine, not that he necessarily is.

 

I realize that characters and even the narrator at times can be unreliable (e.g. the Unreliable Narrator trope), but in this case a character, who is also kind of the narrator (same actor, I think), is never contradicted at any point.  The only one questioning what he says is the protagonist, Judah, who is wrong about a lot of things at that time.  Then at the end, Jesus dying on the cross, all the lightning in the sky, and his blood flowing across the land precisely coincide with the miraculous healing of Miriam and Tirzah of their leprosy.  Even if the 1959 movie isn't explicit and direct about Jesus' divinity (save for one character's words), the implication here sure still doesn't seem vague to me.  And because those words were never contradicted or even left high and dry--in fact, they were supported later on while Judah's doubt was contradicted--perhaps they are to be taken at face value in regard to the movie's message (i.e. the audience learning a lesson through the protagonist's learning).

Edited September 10, 2016 by Melvin Frohike

[RandomCat]

[Murgatroyd]

On September 9, 2016 at 8:42 PM, Melvin Frohike said:

 

I realize that characters and even the narrator at times can be unreliable (e.g. the Unreliable Narrator trope), but in this case a character, who is also kind of the narrator (same actor, I think), is never contradicted at any point.  The only one questioning what he says is the protagonist, Judah, who is wrong about a lot of things at that time.  Then at the end, Jesus dying on the cross, all the lightning in the sky, and his blood flowing across the land precisely coincide with the miraculous healing of Miriam and Tirzah of their leprosy.  Even if the 1959 movie isn't explicit and direct about Jesus' divinity (save for one character's words), the implication here sure still doesn't seem vague to me.  And because those words were never contradicted or even left high and dry--in fact, they were supported later on while Judah's doubt was contradicted--perhaps they are to be taken at face value in regard to the movie's message (i.e. the audience learning a lesson through the protagonist's learning).

 

Fair enough. I watched the movie once, over half a lifetime ago, so my memory of it is far from perfect.

[straggler]

So does the person who greenlit this film still have a job?

[Alpha]

2 hours ago, straggler said:

So does the person who greenlit this film still have a job?

 

If this was at Warner Bros. they probably would've been promoted to head of production.